There's a better word for what I am: an apatheist.
It's a neologism that fuses "apathy" and "theism." It means someone who has absolutely no interest in the question of a god's (or gods') existence, and is just as uninterested in telling anyone else what to believe.

Friday, December 28, 2007

Why So Many Problems

This post is a pointless attempt to make a complex problem simple. It fails.

It starts in the European division:

I found myself in a discussion about "why there are so many problems" in the Middle East and southwest Asia. So I pointed to maps:

Notice where the Kurdish lands cross with the European drawn maps. This is where the problem starts.

Here's another:

But with the new emphasis on Pakistan, I thought this map was the best example:

When you are asked "why are there so many problems?" you can look at the maps.

7 comments:

Yes, this is a good post. It reflects the fact that the modern nation state system is a Western construct, where former colonies transformed to nation states without taking into account ethnic tensions created by colonialists to further their interests. The Middle EAst is a great example of this, as is Africa, Asia, etc.

I'm reading "Devil's Game" about how the US and Brits and French and even Israel at different times funded and supported radical Islam. They were useful as sometimes murderous thugs who opposed atheist Russia, socialism, pan Arab nationalism, secularism and even democracy. Then radical Islam became the Iranian Mullahs, Hamas and Hezbollah i.e. victorious political entities.Holy crap was about all the deficient intelligence community could or can say and where do we go from here.Please attend the parallels of the GOP using the Fundamentalist Religious no-science, no-evolution crowd to whup up on the the social liberals for rank political gain. That Huckabee has roared to primary leads, here and there, is so similar and comes from the same corrupt thinking that you can sell your soul, the Enlightenment and democracy for votes and then retrieve it whole after the election has passed.cheersBlessing on a good New Year to All.

I remember a course at University where our Palestinian Professor talked about how people of Arab descent often sit together in cafes and look at maps of their countries and just say, “these maps contain the only straight lines in any Arabic text or art, they are complete western constructions and have no actual bearing on how we would like to live our lives!” Then they would have another puff on their hookahs and shake their heads…